The Cipher (6 page)

“If I were to awaken after having slept for a thousand years, my first question would be: Has the Riemann Hypothesis been proven?”

—David Hilbert, 1900

FRIDAY

“As humans we must dream, and when we dream, we dream of money.”

—
David Mamet,
The Spanish Prisoner

23

IT WAS SIX
fifteen a.m. and someone was pounding on Smiles's door.

Not cool.

He hugged his comforter tight and buried his head in his pillow. Usually someone knocking at his door with this kind of brute force meant yet another noise complaint from the semi-hot chicks in the apartment below, who had turned out to be disappointingly anal about such things. But he hadn't left the stereo on last night or anything, so he spent the next ten minutes hoping they'd just go away.

They didn't, and at 6:25 in the morning—
6:25 in the morning
—Sir Knock-a-Lot was still going at it. Smiles wrapped the sheet around himself and stumbled to the door.

Ben.

“What the hell, dude?”

“C'mon, we need to beat rush hour,” Ben panted.

He was wearing a polo the color of leftover salmon. With pleated khakis and gray docksiders. Did nerds actually
try
to wear the lamest possible clothes? Was it some kind of elaborate in-joke they had been playing on society for decades?

“I told you we needed to leave early,” Ben said.

“Early means before noon,” Smiles said, but Ben obviously had no concern for such norms of etiquette. “Give me five minutes,” he groaned, since he was up anyway. “And no kidding, dude. For your own good? Change those pants.”

When they got past Framingham, Smiles let it loose.

The Infiniti hit eighty, then eighty-five, then ninety. Cruising speed.

After rousting Smiles with the big scene back at the apartment, Ben was sound asleep in the passenger seat. Smiles had nothing to do but sit there and think about the phone call with Alice, his birth mother.

It's better left alone
.

It's better left alone
, she kept saying.

It's better left alone. I'm getting on a plane. I'll have to end this call now.
Click.

He cranked the stereo to get the call out of his head, tapping out a Green Day song on the steering wheel and watching with some relief when Ben finally shifted upright.

“So, what do you want to play at the casino?” Smiles said before Ben could nod off again. He needed some convo to get him through this drive.

“I can't gamble,” Ben mumbled, half-asleep. “I'd get too nervous.”

Smiles shook his head. “There's nothing to be nervous about. It's all about numbers, and you're a wiz with numbers. You could tear it up at blackjack.
Rain Man
style.”

“What?”

“Forget it,” Smiles said. Ben was already going for some book in his army backpack. He was so paranoid that he'd rigged the closure on it with an actual combination lock. His high school locker had probably looked like Fort Knox.

“So what's that million-dollar problem you're trying to figure out, anyway?”

Ben stared at him. “You really want to know?”

“Why, you don't think I'm smart enough to get it?” Actually, Smiles knew he wouldn't be. “Just dumb it down a little. Gimme the highlights.”

Ben inhaled. “It's called the Riemann Hypothesis.”

Smiles flew by an SUV, focusing tight on Ben's words so he wouldn't get lost.

“Probably the biggest mystery in math,” Ben said, “is the pattern behind prime numbers. No one can figure it out. You know what prime numbers are, right?”

“You better break it down for me, Einstein.” Smiles might have been more embarrassed about his lack of knowledge if Ben hadn't woken him up before sunrise.

Ben flicked off the stereo. “Okay, well, most numbers are the product of at least two other numbers. Like 21. You multiply 3 times 7 and get 21, right?”

“Right.” Smiles was all over that one.

“But the number 7, that's a prime number. 'Cause you can't multiply two other numbers to get 7. Except 7 and 1, and 1 doesn't count.”

“Okay.” Smiles was totally getting this.

“Some prime numbers are huge, with, like, a hundred and fifty digits in them, but they occur more rarely the higher you go. And they don't occur in any pattern. Or, at least, any pattern that anyone's figured out in the whole history of math. Which is weird, because
everything
in math has a pattern.”

“That's the problem, figuring out the pattern? They'll give you a million dollars for that?”

“More or less.” Ben sounded offended. “It's only the holy grail of math problems. Some of the best mathematicians have spent their whole lives trying to figure it out, and no one's gotten it.”

“Why do they call it the Rainman whatever?”

“The Riemann Hypothesis. It's named after this guy, Bernhard Riemann, who actually did a lot of the work behind Einstein's general theory of relativity.” Ben waited a beat, like he expected Smiles to break out into applause for the great Mr. Riemann. “Anyway, he had this hypothesis about how it works . . .”

Ben was getting excited talking about this. His voice was rising and he was rocking back and forth in his seat. Smiles had seen him do the rocking thing in his apartment—one of those little tip-offs, like the pants, that things were a bit off with the kid.

“No one's been able to prove or disprove Riemann's hypothesis, though,” Ben went on. “It has to do with zeta functions, which are a little complica—”

“Yeah, better skip the zeta functions.”

Now that he'd gotten Ben all wound up, Smiles had a sudden urge to shut down the conversation. They were treading close to the topic of Alyce Systems. All this talk about prime numbers was jogging his memory, and he was sure now that his dad's discovery—the one that had revolutionized computer encryption—was based on prime numbers, too. Ben probably knew all about it.

Smiles didn't want to ask him, though, because if the conversation went in that direction Smiles was headed straight for the black hole. He was out for a good time at Fox Creek, not a reminder of his ailing father and how he'd never measure up. He tugged the steering wheel to the right, barely making the off-ramp. A horn blared behind them.

Ben white-knuckled the armrest. “What was that?”

“I need some Taco Bell,” Smiles grumbled.

The rest of the drive felt like work. Traffic snarled as the morning wore on, and Ben wasn't providing much in the way of company, unless spraying the passenger's seat with churro crumbs and scribbling in his notebook counted for anything. The only voice that spoke came from the deadened female vocals of the navigation system.

That and the one in Smiles's head:
It's better left alone. I'm getting on a plane. I'll have to end this call now
.

Smiles's mood didn't improve until they saw Fox Creek rising out of the flat green landscape. If you put a McMansion on horse steroids and placed it in the middle of a farm, that's sort of what Fox Creek looked like. Smiles loved it.

He ignored the self-parking sign and drove straight to the glass-canopied casino entrance.

“Don't even think about leaving that wrapper in the car,” he said to Ben, and grabbed his duffel bag from the backseat. The valet handed him a ticket, and Smiles led the way through revolving doors to a marbled lobby area. Beyond it, the casino rang to the tune of a thousand slot machines. He dumped his bag on the floor, basking in it all for a second, before spotting the hotel reception to their left.

“This way,” he said, and got a few steps before realizing Ben wasn't at his side. He was still standing under the chandelier at the entrance—just frozen there, notebook still in hand (naturally), eyes pointed thoughtfully skyward. What a piece of work. Smiles marched back and waved in Ben's line of vision.

“Stargazing?”

Ben stared at Smiles like he was coming back from a dream. “Sorry, I just . . . never mind.”

“Give the brain a rest, dude. It's time to gamble.”

Ben scurried to Smiles's side, checking his watch as they approached the reception desk. “I need to hurry, actually,” he said. “The opening session starts soon.”

The receptionist guy was wearing a sherbet-blue jacket with dangly gold trim at the shoulders, like somebody had asked Walt Disney to design some military uniforms and they'd gotten shipped to a casino in Connecticut by mistake.

“Can I help you gentlemen?”

“I'm here with the CRYPTCON . . . conference,” Ben said.

“Oh my,” Sergeant Sherbet said. “Some young code breakers, eh? So exciting. Okay, name on your reservation, please?”

Ben pulled a sheet of paper from his backpack. “Ben Eltsin,” he said, and rattled off a confirmation number. Sergeant Sherbet sprung to action at his computer, but Smiles got distracted from the rest of the exchange.

A girl was headed their way. Cutoff jean shorts. Toned legs. Sun-bleached hair. A strand of it cascaded silk-like across a pixie face with honey-colored eyes. Smiles prayed to a merciful God she would stop at the desk to check in. She did. And she gave him a grin, too.

She had a scar high on her cheek, barely the size of a fingertip, shaped like a starfish. It crinkled when she smiled. Maybe Smiles's radar was off after three hours in the car with Ben, but he thought there was something happening here. Smiles returned her grin—going for
Yeah, I'm feeling it, too
.

“Hey,” he said, because you had to start somewhere.

“Hey.” Her voice was like a warm bath.

“I'm Smiles.” He didn't extend his arm, on the theory that they were beyond handshakes already.

“Smiles?”

“A nickname.” He shrugged, meeting her eyes, thinking,
This is totally working.

She nodded and pointed a thumb at herself. “Erin.”

He was getting a better read on her now. Her face was soft—her features cute and rounded—but there was something devilish there. Those honey-colored eyes, they were heat seekers. If there was any justice in the world, Smiles would be getting some action tonight.

“Here for the weekend?” she said.

“Yeah, for this conference thing,” Smiles said. “You?”

Erin gave him a teasing smile, and the starfish scar drew in on itself coyly. “Guess you need to go.”

He followed her eyes over his shoulder. Ben was standing at the side of the reception desk, flapping a card key envelope at his side with a pointed look of impatience. Sometime soon, they were going to have a long talk about the wingman concept.

“Ermm . . . yeah . . .” But before Smiles could salvage the situation, Erin had stepped to Sergeant Sherbet and Ben was pulling him down a hallway with signs that said
CRYPTCON AHEAD
. It looked like Walt Disney had designed the carpet in here, too.

“Was that really necessary?” Smiles said.

“Yeah, sorry. I know you were flirting with that girl.”

“Flirting? She was practically giving me a
lap dance
.” He sighed—Ben would never appreciate the astronomical chances of meeting a pixie sun goddess who was doing her best to throw herself at you inside of five minutes.

“C'mon,” Ben said, checking the little envelope with the card keys. “Cedar Tower, room 537.”

“What's the big rush?”

“They said there was going to be a special guest at this opening session. I don't want to miss it.”

“Oh, I'm sure it'll be epic,” Smiles said as they followed a sign to the Cedar Tower through the conference-center part of the hotel. Turning a corner, they saw a registration table with a CRYPTCON sign and a line of people straight from Dork Central worming out behind it. Smiles cringed at the collection of short-sleeve business shirts, wrinkled dress pants, and old-man walking shoes—in some cases, all on one person. Would it kill these people to hit a J.Crew?

Ben's tiny bird shoulders slumped at the sight of the line. “Mind dumping this in the room for me?” he said, holding out the gym bag that doubled as his luggage. “I really need to get in that line.”

Smiles grabbed the bag, happy to be loosed on his own. “Just call me Jeeves.”